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Playing With Fire: Hot-Sauce Recipes

Tangy, salted green chilies, left, and garlicky red chili hot sauce.Credit
Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

EVERY time I contemplate making my own hot sauce, the label on a bottle in my pantry comes to mind, on which a red-faced, bug-eyed, fire-breathing devil cries an ocean of tears.

I also think about those warnings that accompany most of the hot sauce recipes I’ve read. Unanimously they strongly advise against inhaling the stinging vapors, lest you permanently scar your lungs.

All of this, combined with the fact that commercial hot sauce is cheap and tasty, has put me off the project.

But when scarlet, gold and neon-orange chili peppers hit the farmers’ market this summer, I decided it was time to set caution aside and give it a go. I wanted to preserve the peppers’ stunning hue and burning bite, and hot sauce seemed like the best way.

Photo

Credit
Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

I searched online for a recipe, using garlic-imbued sriracha chili sauce as inspiration — it’s one of my favorites. Most called for chilies, aromatics like garlic or shallot and some kind of sweetener, usually sugar.

It all sounded good except the sugar. Not that I have anything against sugar, but I had another idea. Instead of using a sweet element that didn’t add complexity, I thought of a red bell pepper. Not only would it add sweetness and body, it also has an appealing fruitiness.

I chopped the peppers, simmered them with vinegar, garlic and salt, and puréed it all in the blender. To my delight, unless I stuck my head directly over the pot, I was not overwhelmed with noxious fumes. I also used latex gloves for the chopping.

The sauce was intense, slightly sweet and hot but not searing, with a thick, silky texture. It was similar to sriracha, but had its own, more earthy personality.

Because there were chilies left over, I also whipped up an uncooked sauce of chopped green chilies, salt and vinegar. It had a grassy, tangy, salty heat that was completely different from the richer, sweeter sauce.

Then I used them both to season a dish of plain rice noodles. The flavors shimmered in my mouth. The best part, though, was exorcizing that bottle of hot sauce with the creepy label from my cupboard. Despite its incendiary graphic, the store-bought stuff lacked the nuanced burn of my homemade sauce — a sleeping devil in an old jam jar.

A version of this article appears in print on August 25, 2010, on page D2 of the New York edition with the headline: Hot Sauce: Playing With Fire. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe